And the supreme bitterness, from which all that was honest and upright within her shrank with inward shame and self-loathing, lay in the fact that she, above all others, owed Garth Trent—­that which he had begged of her in vain—­the tribute of silence concerning the past.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE FURNACE

As Sara took her seat on board the train for Monkshaven, she was conscious of that strange little thrill of the wanderer returned which is the common possession of the explorer and of the school-girl at their first sight of the old familiar scenes from which they have been exiled.

She could hardly believe that barely a year had elapsed since she had quitted Monkshaven.  So many things had happened—­so many changes taken place.  Audrey had been transformed into Mrs. Herrick; Tim had been given a commission; and Molly, the one-time butterfly, was now become a working-bee—­a member of the V.A.D. and working daily at Oldhampton Hospital.  Sara could scarcely picture such a metamorphosis!

The worst news had been that of Major Durward’s death—­he had been killed in action, gallantly leading his men, in the early part of the year.  Elisabeth had written to Sara at the time—­a wonderfully brave, simple letter, facing her loss with a fortitude which Sara, remembering her adoration for her husband and her curious antipathy to soldiering as a profession, had not dared to anticipate.  There was something rather splendid about her quiet acceptance of it.  It was Elisabeth at her best—­humanly hurt and broken, but almost heroic in her endurance now that the blow had actually fallen.  And Sara prayed that no further sacrifice might be demanded from her—­prayed that Tim might come through safely.  For herself, she mourned Geoffrey Durward as one good comrade does another.  She knew that his death would leave a big gap in the ranks of those she counted friends.

It had been a wonderful year—­that year which she had passed in France—­wonderful in its histories of tragedy and self-sacrifice, and in its revelation both of the brutality and of the infinite fineness of humanity.  Few could have passed through such an experience and remained unchanged, certainly no one as acutely sentient and receptive as Sara.

She felt as though she had been pitchforked into a vast melting-pot, where the cast-iron generalizations and traditions which most people consider their opinions grew flexible and fluid in the scorching heat of the furnace, assimilating so much of the other ingredients in the cauldron that they could never reassume their former unqualified and rigid state.

And now that year of crowded life and ardent service was over, and she was side-tracked by medical orders for an indefinite period.

“Go back to England,” her doctor had told her, “to the quietest corner in the country you can find—­and try to forget that there is a war!”